The Jonathan Capehart Saga, Or Why Progressives Have Stopped Trusting the Corporate Media

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/02/the-jonathan-capehart-saga-or-why-progressives-hav.html

There are people in this world who get genuine pleasure in wasting their precious brain power on conspiracy theories, and what I want to say before we go any further is that I am not one of them. I don’t believe 9/11 was an inside job. I don’t believe the Sandy Hook shootings were invented by the government in a failed attempt to pass gun control legislation. I don’t believe the moon landing took place on a Hollywood sound stage. I am not, as far as I know, a raving lunatic.

I’ve lived long enough to believe in Hanlan’s razor, which says, “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.” In fact, I believe that conspiracy theories often alter and delude the minds of believers—when a person is overly anxious to believe something, he’ll skip several steps along the way and leave his critical thinking skills behind. It’s a dangerous path to travel, and it gives me a little black pit of anxiety in my stomach. I don’t want to see shadows in the corner, because I’m afraid this will say more about me—and my mental state—than about the world. I like my hats made of soft fabric, not tin foil.

Recently, you may have heard Bernie Sanders supporters—of which I am one—complain about the overwhelming bias of the corporate media, by which we mean traditionally “liberal” outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post and even the cable news networks that aren’t Fox News. You may have rolled your eyes at these complaints, and I understand that. That’s exactly how I’d react, under normal circumstances. I don’t want conspiracies to be true, and past experience with other conspiracies has taught me that when something is too wild to believe, it’s probably bullshit.

But after months of following the Democratic primary race, I’ve found it impossible to avoid a basic conclusion: The corporate media is in the bag for Hillary Clinton, lock, stock, and barrel. And while their unrelenting advocacy may not reach the level of nefarious conspiracy, it is transparently corrupt. And if the nation’s center-left wants to understand why progressives seem to have staged a sudden revolt from the Democratic party, and are threatening to abandon Hillary Clinton in the general election, they have to understand this feeling of betrayal.

Right or wrong, progressives have come to believe that they’re on the wrong side of a rigged system.
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---more at link above, as he outlines the Capehart smear...

Spoiler alert- the last sentence of the blog: "We don't fucking matter."